


Eternal Tails: Chaos Break

by Pantalion



Series: Eternal Tails [1]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games), Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Chaos Emeralds, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Dark Past, Diary/Journal, Dimension Travel, End of the World, Evil Wins, Gen, Mad Science, Major Character Injury, Master Emerald, Mental Breakdown, My First Work in This Fandom, Past Tense, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Science Fiction, Surprisingly Canonical, Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25126816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pantalion/pseuds/Pantalion
Summary: All is lost, the day wasn't saved, and the only one left to do anything is an unwilling young fox with one last bad idea and a mountain of regrets. How far would you go to save a world that wasn't even yours in the first place?
Relationships: Amy Rose & Miles "Tails" Prower, Miles "Tails" Prower & Sonic the Hedgehog
Series: Eternal Tails [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820140
Comments: 5
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

Hi! My name is Miles, and I'm going to save the world today.

Maybe twice, actually, if I survive.

If I don't… Or didn't, I guess? Then this recording will explain everything that happened, why I did what I did, and hopefully show why I failed. I'll also attach some schematics to the file, so whoever finds this can try again where I've failed.

I really hope it's you listening to this, Sonic.

I'm so sorry I let you down. I hope you're okay.

…

Okay, assuming you're not someone who already knows what's happening, I guess some background is in order, especially if you're a native, and I could use some distraction while I finish setting all this up, so here goes, I guess.

Um...

I'm not sure where to begin, actually. It must seem pretty weird if you lived here and all of a sudden a fat lunatic with a rock addiction turned up out of nowhere and made himself god, or you found this weird recording by some fox you've probably never heard of. So… I guess I'll start at the beginning. Sorry if you actually know all this stuff already, but don't worry, I'll be quick with this part so you can get right to hearing about how I died. Or saved the world, I guess, but hopefully I'll remember to come back and delete this if that happens.

Okay, so my full name is Miles Prower, I'm a fox, and I am, as far as I can guess, thirteen years old at the time of this recording. My friends call me Tails, because I have two. Tails that is, not friends. I'm not sure how many friends I have left right now. Hopefully more than two.

Anyway, I grew up on a place called Cocoa Island. Don't remember my birth parents, so I'm not sure if I was born there or not, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they just abandoned me there after inflicting me with the groan inducing pun that was my birth name. Not a great start in life, but the flickies on the island took care of me when I was too young to take care of myself, and the old workshop I lived in made me grow up to really treasure technology. Especially when the Kukku empire attacked when I was six or so, but that's another story, and not a very important one, since neither Cocoa or the Kukku even exist on this planet as far as I know. Well, if they do that raises an interesting question of convergent transdimensional history- wait. Sorry, getting distracted. Been awhile since I last ate, hard to focus.

Anyway, growing up living on Cocoa was pretty cool. Learned to speak flicky, learned a lot by taking apart the old machines there, and learned to fly too. Like, actually fly. With my tails. Not with a plane or anything, I actually spin them to generate thrust? The physiology of my butt is actually pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. But again, I digress. When I left Cocoa island at the tender age of sevenish I was bright eyed, bushy tailed - doubly so - and keen to find my place in the world.

Didn't go great. That's where I first got the nickname Tails, and first found out that while some mobians (do you have mobians here too? I saw a human when I arrived) have tails, they don't generally have two of them, and don't generally like weird mutant kids who lapse into flicky tweets when they get flustered. Which I did, a lot, back then. I was so excited to find more people like me... Well, I guess the Kukku empire were mobians too, but they were avians, so kid me thought they were a lot closer to the flickies than me. Plus we were generally trying to blow each other up or shoot each other at the time, so not the best first experience. I still get on edge around avian mobians, if I'm honest. It was a strange time in my life.

Anyway, where was I? Right, little kid, excited to meet people like me, but nobody _was_ like me, and nobody liked me either. I just drifted from place to place until I met _him_.

Uh, Sonic, if you're the one listening to this _please_ skip through this stuff, it's embarrassing, y'know?

Okay, so there I was, West Side Island (again, probably doesn't exist on this planet), middle of nowhere, talking to flickies and being a weird lonely little kid when I saw this blue _blur_ streaking through the palms. Fastest thing I'd ever seen, and I'd seen my share of rockets. So? I start following it. I mentioned I could use my tails for thrust? If I build up enough speed and then angle them just right then I can juuust about break Mach 1 along the ground, but it was all I could do to barely keep up, and even then because the blur had to deal with obstacles that I could just fly over. Day after day, just stalking this amazing blue… _thing_. All because it was new, and it was cool, and there was nothing else like it anywhere, ever.

It took me all day moving flat out before I even saw that it was a hedgehog, and I'm sure he could have lost me at any time before that if he'd really wanted to. He was weird, just like me, bright blue and faster than anything on two legs had any right to be, but unlike me he wasn't chased out or yelled at. He wasn't hanging around in the trees at the edge of villages. He was _cool_ , he was _popular_ , and I was fascinated. Scared too, if I'm honest. I ran and hid whenever I thought he might see me… And then on the third day I lost him… Wow, um, I really swear this is relevant, by the way, sorry if I'm rambling.

It was that afternoon that I ran across a plane, parked on the beach. Now, I've loved machines all my life, grew up around a lot of them in the workshop, and made a few vehicles of my own by then, so I was admiring it when, who did I see sleeping on the wing? The blue hedgehog I'd been chasing!

My first instinct was to sneak away. I was intimidated after all, but I was too slow.

...Heh, not the last time that's happened. But I'm glad in this case, because it was about then that the whole island went to heck. Fire everywhere, animals panicking, flickies squawking like crazy. I hid under the plane, the hedgehog did too. I was panicked too then, I kept saying it wasn't me, that it wasn't my fault. Probably started chirping at him too. I hadn't quite kicked that habit back then, hadn't been socialised properly yet.

But the hedgehog wasn't mad. At me at least. He told me his name was Sonic, that the island was under attack by a human called "Doctor Eggman". Actually his real name is Ivo Robotnik, but like me, I guess the nickname stuck. Gave him a bit of a complex too, since he started making a bunch of egg themed robots and going crazy.

And that's history. My world's history at least. That was the first time I helped to save the world. Though I'm not sure how helpful I was in the end. I didn't have any gadgets with me, it was just me and Sonic fighting an army of giant robots trying to recover the purple Chaos Emerald before Eggman did, while getting the other six away from him so he couldn't use them to power an orbital killsat called the Death Egg. Told you the guy had a complex.

Oh, right. The Chaos Emeralds are important, even though you've probably never heard of them before. You don't even have power rings here, after all.

Chaos Emeralds are native to my planet, and for now let's just say that they're powerful. Incredibly so. And Sonic was a genius at using them. When he found all seven and held them all in his hands? He started _glowing_. Bright yellow, nothing could even hurt him anymore. And fast? There was no competition after that. In the end I could only deliver him into the Death Egg on his plane and then just watch the sparks fly.

I can say, at least, that I helped though. When he used up the last of his rings - hard to explain those, sort of like coalesced sources of ambient free floating energy, I guess? They're actually pretty common, seen more dimensions with them than without, though that doesn't mean much to you if you've never even seen one, I'm sure. But yeah, when the last of the rings fuelling his transformation were used up he bailed out of the Death Egg, which was crashing at the time. I managed to get underneath him with the plane before he hit the ocean and saved his life.

Well, not like the fall itself would have hurt him much. You can't move like he does and get bothered by something like terminal velocity. But since he never bothered to learn to swim- Ow!

Sorry, burned my finger… Wait, I'll edit this part out later.

And that was the start of my longest, and best friendship I've ever had. Sonic seemed to like having me around. He taught me a lot, really helped bring me out of my shell, and never picked on me for being the weird little fox geek that I was… Still am, I guess. The cool big brother I never had.

And hey, not long after that I helped save the world again, when Eggman tried to fix the Death Egg by getting someone to steal the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic. Um, that reminds me, if it's you listening, Knuckles? Please remember that Doctor Eggman isn't your friend, and that he is going to try and trick you. I know you're not dumb, but you need to stop being so trusting, okay? Take it from me.

Once the Death Egg crashed again, it landed on Angel Island, which is like a regular island, except it flies around in the sky and has, or had, the Master Emerald in it. Another important one you may not have heard of. Without getting too technical I guess it's… Kind of like a control mechanism for the Chaos Emeralds? It can control the chaos in them, condense it, shut them down… Again, this is important, sorry. Well, we managed to recover all the emeralds, and thanks to the Master Emerald they output enough power that even _I_ could use it. Kinda. I'm no Sonic. _He_ used all that power no problem, the most powerful I've ever seen him, or anyone, for that matter. Me? I had to dump most of it into a flock of flickies we'd saved, and it _still_ felt like I was tearing apart at the seams trying to keep the power inside. Robotnik didn't have a chance after that, and I'd helped Sonic save the world _again_. Three for three. Does wonders for your confidence.

Well, I'm skipping a lot of stuff that isn't important, but that was the big pattern of my life, of my world, right there. Someone, usually Eggman, tries to take over the world or destroy a big chunk of it, and someone, usually Sonic, sometimes with me helping him, stops them and saves the day.

… Huh, wow, even trying to talk about myself I'm talking about Sonic a lot, huh? I'm not bitter. I love the guy, but that's just how it is. You can barely even talk about anything without mentioning Sonic back on my world, that's just how big a deal he was. And he earned it. Big thing about Chaos Emeralds is that they… "repel" each other. Like magnets. When all seven get together, sooner or later, one way or another they are going to separate and appear somewhere else in the world. Maybe not if they're kept in the Master Emerald's chamber, I guess?

But yeah, anyway, it wasn't as though Sonic could just grab all the emeralds and then just fly around until he caught Eggman once and for all - and for a fat guy, that human was seriously good at running away. That stuff only stuck around for a day or two, then the chaos emeralds were gone to cause chaos somewhere else around the world. It was a lot of work, and I was usually just flying a plane around, not the one fighting all day every day.

Well, I never "saved the day" by myself, but I did finally achieve something a bit bigger than stopping small time villains and saving flickies. Eggman launched a nuke on a town, and I, all by my lonesome, somehow managed to stop it. The town gave me the yellow chaos emerald that had showed up there as a reward... Well that was a whole thing. I managed to fabricate a copy of it back then, nowhere near as powerful as the real thing, but close enough to trick Eggman and help Sonic save the world a few days later. Wait, that's important too, so just bear it in mind, it'll save time later on.

Well, I wasn't always by Sonic's side. As the years went by he spent more time with other, faster heroes than the tagalong kit. Usually Hedgehogs, actually, never really thought of them as a particularly fast species before. That was fine. I never really cared about being in the spotlight, you know? And the downtime let me get back into science and engineering in a big way. I made big strides on things like synthetic rings, robots, weapons. It was never easy to keep up with someone like Sonic, so I was always looking for an edge, technological or otherwise, to help bridge that gap, to be _useful_. Even if he didn't always listen to me, or need me, I- I guess I just hoped that I'd at least be useful enough that he wouldn't abandon me.

…

Wow, this got pretty heavy. Funny to say that considering the circumstances, right? Well, anyway, I'm almost done with the backstory anyway. Only two or three more things to mention, all of them pretty important to understand what's happened with your world right now.

First, I guess, is that there's not just our dimension and yours. I mentioned that earlier I think? And at least one of those dimensions has a world a lot like mine, rings, mobians, and reality warping emeralds - the Sol Emeralds. I guess call them the Sol dimension, and where I'm from the Chaos dimension. Well, I mentioned that Chaos Emeralds repel one another? Well Sol Emeralds do the same thing, but, again, like magnets, the two different kinds of emerald attract one another, and when all seven of each are combined, you can actually use the energy interaction to travel between dimensions.

Yeah, I was the one to figure out how to control that, so I guess that makes it my fault what's happening right now. So... sorry. Again.

Secondly, there's several other cosmic stones we know about over in the Chaos dimension, the most important one right now being the Phantom Ruby. In terms of power, it's possibly another dimension's equivalent to our Master Emerald, granting near infinite abilities to augment physical reality with hyper-real illusion matrices. Getting _that_ near the Chaos Emeralds messes with reality hard enough to break the space time continuum on top of just warping dimensions.

Finally, you know I mentioned being able to create a copy of a chaos emerald? Well Eggman managed to do the same with the Phantom Ruby. Of course, _I_ did it first try, but I'm just surprised he didn't call it a phantom egg or something.

Like I said earlier - I think? My fake emerald was nowhere near the power output of the original, but in the hands of a proficient chaos user they could use it's ambient energy to do some of the things they could do with a chaos emerald - stuff like low level spatial distortions, energy blasts, and physical enhancement. Nothing so great as the transformations with all seven real emeralds working together of course, but still, _really_ wish I could do all that stuff, especially right now.

By that metric, Eggman's replica could be called a failure - the phantom ruby prototypes didn't _output_ power at all. On their own, they were useless. But when enough charge was poured into one, it worked almost like the original did, full on reality bending super powers.

Well, we destroyed them, saved the world again, but the funny thing about technology? Once it's been created once, it's there to stay. It's not like water dripped on the first cavemobian's fire and he said "Well that's that, guess I'll never try _that_ again.".

But I guess that's enough backstory that you should understand what happened. Sonic never managed… or never wanted? To stop Eggman for good. He'd make new gadgets, new schemes, and we would stop him. Over and over again, year after year.

But when you fight someone long enough? One day they're going to win.

And with someone like Ivo Robotnik?

He only needs to win once.

And this was the time he did.


	2. Chapter 2

Hm. I dunno where to start again. I guess I'll just say whatever I remember. The more info the better, right? Especially if you're going to finish what I started.

Heh. Or maybe I'm just making excuses to talk? You may never know.

It all started maybe a year ago, and while far be it from me to call Eggman a bald-headed manchild without a shred of original thought, the weirdest part was just how _basic_ it was.

Eggman stole the Master Emerald.

That's it. No pretending to have been redeemed to trick everyone, no kidnapping someone for ransom, no giant doom weapon or crazy schemes. Ivo "overplanning is just another kind of genius" Robotnik just swooped onto Angel Island with a ton of badnik robots, caught Knuckles (the guardian of the Master Emerald) in an illusion with one of his prototype rubies, and by the time Knuckles had escaped the Master Emerald was gone and the island had crashed into the ocean.

He didn't even stop to gloat.

In hindsight, I probably should have realised something was up as soon as Knuckles called us up for help, but at the time none of us thought anything of it. Not the first time Knuckles lost the Master Emerald, not the first time he called us for help, business as usual for Team Sonic…

Yeah… that's really our name. I'd have called us _Team Blitz_ if it were up to me, but you save the world enough times you get to name teams after yourself if you want, don't judge.

Anyway, yeah, usually a stolen Master Emerald is pretty simple, assuming Knuckles didn't break it, which he's done _way_ too often for being its "guardian". Knuckles and the Master Emerald are linked, so usually he can just "feel" where it is, so we just give him a lift so he can punch whoever took it, sometimes in space. If that doesn't work, we go find where Eggman (well, usually Eggman) is causing trouble, run in, break a bunch of his stuff and take it back, maybe put it back together again. World saved, back home in time for chilli dogs.

This time though? Nothing. By the time we got there, Knuckles had punched every badnik still left on the island and was sulking in the hidden palace where the Emerald is kept in between thefts. After we convinced him we weren't involved (again, the guy has trust issues) he said that he couldn't tell where the Master Emerald was at all. That it feels like it's still on its empty stand… At which point Sonic stood on the altar and started making fun of him. Classic Sonic. He sorta deserved to get hit though.

With no clues to go off, and no sign of Eggman causing trouble anywhere nearby, we took Knuckles with us back to our base to look for clues, maybe check the news for giant flying eggs or something important getting blown up or stolen, but nothing showed up. It didn't take long for Sonic and Knuckles to get bored and start fighting, so I sent them both to… uh… "check out some strange energy readings" over on Christmas Island. Not the first time I've done that for a little peace and quiet, and hey, sometimes they get lucky and find something cool, you know?

It wasn't until the fourth day of searching I found a lead, and it wasn't even because of anything I did. There I was, stress eating mints by the handful while I banged my head against the wall - sometimes literally - trying to find _any_ sign of Robotnik, the Master Emerald, even of the Doctor's usual allies and coming up empty, when I get contacted by Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic's… Friend? Nemesis? … Angsty palette-swapped doppelganger? Anyway, he wanted to come by my lab for a fake emerald, since his chaos powers had stopped working.

Now, I've… complicated feelings towards him, but Shadow's skills as a chaos controller are nothing short of amazing. The only thing Sonic has him beat at is _maybe_ his Hyper level transformation, but as far as I know he's Shadow's never been in contact with the seven supercharged chaos emeralds, so he could have one as well. He _does_ have basically the same Chaos transformation with the normal emeralds after all. And he's a little faster than Sonic with his cheaty shoes. And stronger. And did I mention immortal? And sooo _edgy_.

Ugh, sorry. Like I said, _complicated_ feelings. It's not like I hate the guy, he's mellowed a bit over the years, and in some ways it's nice to have someone more pragmatic than Sonic around who will actually deal with problems _permanently_ every now and then… Well, you don't need to hear about me complain. It's not relevant anyway.

Anyway, so long as Shadow's within a few zones of a real chaos emerald then he can use their ambient energy to use Chaos Control. They generally don't stay in one place for very long, especially if they're too close to each other, but it's rare for him to be out of range of all seven at once. I saw the connection immediately, though at the time I didn't realise just how

With no leads and the readings on Christmas Island sadly coming up with nothing - meaning Knuckles and Sonic were back now, and that Shadow was joining them in making a mess of my lab - it became clear that we needed more help on this one: Rouge the Bat, unrivalled jewel thief and not infrequent culprit behind emerald related disappearances. I don't know if she's somehow attuned to the Master Emerald like Knuckles, or if her greed for jewellery has somehow turned her into a living gemdar, but the two of them working together had never failed to find results in the past, however much they fight with each other.

Fortunately Rouge took the fact that somebody had managed to steal both the Master Emerald and all seven Chaos Emeralds at the same time as a personal slight, since she's been trying to do the same thing for basically ever. She agreed to help, and her and Knuckles left with Shadow to search the world together, searching for any sign of either the chaos emeralds or the Master Emerald. Thankfully, they didn't find them straight away.

Wait, no, I mean, it would have been great if they'd found them. I was just feeling so useless at this point that it made me feel a bit better is all. Heck, even Sonic was miserable at this point. Not moping around, that's not his style, but he isn't the patient type, and I could tell that being stuck with a problem that needed solving and no way to solve it was killing him. So when something _finally_ happened, a week after Eggman's initial attack at this point, he was already raring to go - a Silver Hedgehog had showed up in New Station Square, broke into a military laboratory and, according to G.U.N, ran out with a bunch of experimental tech.

Now this may seem weird, but we were actually pretty hopeful there. "Silver" is another of those hedgehogs that I mentioned. Super fast, super powered, super _special_. He's from the future… Or _a_ future? Time stuff gives me a headache.

While Silver's done extreme stuff like this before over the years, he's usually doing it to try and avert some calamity that's going to have far reaching catastrophic effects on the future - which with Eggman running around isn't too infrequent. Basically a less mopey Shadow with weird hair and crazy future chaos powers, like telekinesis. If Silver was around, it was a sign that Eggman was up to something big, but he was probably going to be a big help in stopping it, and would hopefully have some information about what "it" was.

Needless to say we jumped in my plane - Cyclone-3 - and jetted over there to talk to the G.U.N representative… Oh, G.U.N is the military branch of the United Federation. Not to go too deep into geopolitics, it's one of the human countries where I'm from. They _don't_ control the whole world, however much they may act like it sometimes, but they are hugely influential in the human territories and more than willing to throw their weight around. They're well funded, high tech, and they have all the finesse of a charging rhinobot.

The lab was in full lockdown when we arrived, army and mechs everywhere. Whatever it was that was stolen must have been important. Sonic went inside the facility to inspect the security footage while I stayed outside by the Cyclone (G.U.N's agents keep trying to peek at my tech when I'm not looking). We didn't expect much - not many cameras can make out something moving past them faster at five times the speed of sound, but if the mystery hedgehog had stopped moving in line with the camera then we could get a positive ID.

Well, here's where things got weird I guess. Not five minutes after Sonic went inside the Gunbots on the compound went crazy and started shooting at everyone in sight, me included. By the time I'd jumped into the Cyclone a lot of the G.U.N soldiers were already down and I was missing a bullet's worth of fur from my right ear. I'd have lost a lot more if I hadn't been holding a few power rings at the time.

Well, I'm not like Sonic, who can literally outspeed bullets, and I can't really do any of that chaos control stuff like Shadow or Silver even if the Chaos Emeralds weren't missing. But the reason that G.U.N is always sniffing around after my inventions? My toys are _way_ better than theirs. In this case to the tune of one transforming assault mecha with twin gatling cannons, rapid-fire missile launcher, and a laser powerful enough to sign my name on the moon. My biggest problem was just how _chaotic_ the battle was. The surviving soldiers were panicking, and the Cyclone is a giant red walking tank that was gunning down _their_ robots (I may also have been gloating juuust a little over the speakers about how much better my mech was at the time), so half of them decided _I_ was the threat and started shooting me. Meanwhile I was trying to position myself between them and as many Gunbots as possible, so what actually happened was that I ended up taking fire from both sides, and they just kept _coming_. I think that more must have moved in from other parts of town because I'd run out of missiles by the time they finally stopped. The Cyclone was almost in pieces, broken bots all around me, and I was ringless. Worse, only a handful of soldiers were still standing at this point, and they were all in bad shape and looking at _me_ as though I was crazy.

I'm not sure if the lab had a security lockdown or what, but once the Gunbots were down and the shooting stopped, Sonic came out at top speed. I'll never forget what he said when he saw me.

"Tails, what did you _do?!_ "


	3. Chapter 3

Well, I'll be the first to admit that it looked bad. At least at first glance – see, G.U.N uses wispon tech nowadays, while the Cyclone's powered by a crystalline lattice core with artificial ring cores for its missiles. When you look closely there's a qualitative difference between the markings each-

Wait, sorry, that probably doesn't mean anything to you. It doesn't really matter either, Sonic doesn't pay enough attention to notice the difference even if he knew what to look for. All he'd have seen was a bunch of shot up G.U.N platoons, and me standing in the middle with two literally smoking guns, and he looked horrified at the damage.

At me.

…

Sorry. Just... thinking.

Anyway, I started to stammer out an explanation about the bots attacking me first, but he cut me off, pointed up to one of the security cameras on the side of the lab, and said that he'd seen everything - that he just didn't understand why I started the fight in the first place. He asked me to come down and turn myself in while he tried to sort things out with G.U.N, and he sounded so… ashamed.

Yeah, that hurt.

In hindsight, it's pretty obvious that anyone that could suborn a hundred G.U.N mechs could hack into a security system and have Sonic see anything they wanted, but at the time? I'd already felt terrible for all the soldiers I hadn't been able to save, but Sonic thought I was the one who shot them. I could barely even think straight, I felt sick.

So I did the first thing that came to mind, I left. An arm fell off when I morphed Cyclone back into jet mode, but the engines were still fine. Sonic shouted for me to stop, but I'm pretty sure he let me go… well, that or he knew he couldn't stop me. He could never stop Eggman from flying away in that airship of his either.

Well, anyway, I was a wanted fugitive, with a bounty on my head and one of the richest countries after my fuzzy butt. Well, again. Long story, not relevant, but not the first time I shot up an army of G.U.N's mechs. Not too much of a hassle in the Mobian territories (most Mobians have a pretty dim view of humans thanks to Eggman), but more importantly, if I flew back to my lab then Sonic would be there, and the last thing I wanted to do was face him right then.

So I went home, back to good old Cocoa island for the first time in five years. I wish I could say that I got a big hometown welcome, but I can at least say it was just the way I left it - an uninhabited wilderness full of flickies and unreasonably hostile predators. Well, the forest had pretty much recovered from the kukku's fire bombing, and the old lab was a bit overgrown, but nobody ever showed much interest in Cocoa. Even the kukku only showed up because the Chaos emeralds ended up there once. There were actually a lot of wars that started because of that. Even though it would be brief, a country that gathered all the emeralds together could easily expand, or take out their main rival, before they dispersed. If Eggman was good for anything I guess it's that the arms race he pushed us into eventually made the emeralds less appealing than the weaker, but more reliable, wispon tech.

And… like the last six years of fighting were just a dream, like the world wasn't at stake, like nobody was relying on me, I just dropped everything, sat down and started working.

Yeah, real brave of me right there. I'm not proud of it, but that's what I did. Fixed up the roof, replaced the rotten furniture, and before long I was back to working on my old workbench, tooling around with a few crusty old designs I never got around to trying before I left.

I wasn't sure exactly how long I stayed there. Sulking, I guess, though at the time I felt so tired of everything. It was like I was on autopilot, numbly going through the motions. But in the end, big surprise, a hedgehog found me. It just wasn't the one I expected.

… Amy Rose. The second hedgehog I ever met, and Sonic's second most determined stalker. After me, I guess. She's nowhere near as fast as Sonic, closer to my top speed actually, which for a while had me wondering if it was some kind of weird sexual dimorphism among hedgehogs. I can't say I'm that surprised she was the one who found me though. I'm living proof that you can more or less keep up with Sonic so long as you can move decently quick and have a trick up your sleeve. Mine is being able to fly, hers is an incredible talent for figuring out where he went and figuring how to get there by the shortest route possible. You know, stalker powers. I never saw her use it on anyone else but him before, but since I've never mentioned Cocoa island to anyone, clearly her talent is a force to be reckoned with.

For a long time Amy and I didn't get along great, for reasons. One of which is that I kept helping Sonic escape from her. But nowadays she and I are pretty good friends. Probably helps that she's really down to earth compared to the usual people that hang out with Sonic. No world bending chaos powers, apart from the hammer thing, no angsty backstory either, and she's usually really nice. Unless she's mad.

Well, she looked mad.

Correction, she looked super mad, and like she'd been mad for a long time. And I, breakfast halfway to my mouth, was terrified. I flailed for some explanation, excuse, apology… or at least to ask her to have mercy and not hit me in the head too hard - girl's got a heck of a swing. But in the end, Amy beat me to the punch.

She started crying. And while I panicked harder than ever, she hugged me. Just… Hugged me. And cried. And then I started crying too and...

Nope. Nuh uh, I can't do this, it's too embarrassing. I'll make something up. Super manly. We uh, arm wrestled and stuff and she was wowed by my prowess and promised to introduce me to nubile vixens.

… Okay, more convincing than that. I've never even seen another fox Mobian. Whatever, I'll figure something out later. When we finished cr- wrestling Amy explained that the soldiers I saved confirmed that I wasn't shooting at them, which put the security footage into doubt, but not enough to exonerate me. Sonic took it pretty hard when he found out, and had spent the whole time searching around in the Typhoon looking for me and trying to find Silver to clear my name, though the last she'd heard he was heading to Angel Island to meet up with Knuckles and friends.

"Now, are you coming with me so you two dummies can say sorry to each other and make up, or do I have to carry you?"

Pretty sure that was what she said in the end. May have been a bit more threatening the way she said it. But I didn't mind. Without her, I might still be on Cocoa island to this day.

... Well, if I'm honest my current situation is way worse, but still. Thanks, Ames.

We took the Cyclone, since she arrived by boat (still no idea how she managed to track me across half a planet over water, but not even the top three compared to her serious stalking days), while I caught up on sixteen hours of missed messages and compiled news reports about the silver hedgehog sightings that occurred while I was being a hermit. Sonic isn't good at this sort of stuff, so I shudder to think what he must have gone through while I was gone. Heck, it took me less time to spot the pattern than it took Sonic to finish his first message.

It was a great big spiral, with Angel Island at its centre.


	4. Chapter 4

The husks of broken badniks were still littered around Angel Island when we got there. Brought back memories of simpler times. Also? Super creepy. Like a graveyard. Or maybe I was just feeling a little spooked anyway? The clue linking to Angel Island, Knuckles and everyone being here… My brain was a bit rusty from my downtime maybe, but it had caught on something. Something that I'd missed, though I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Still, there was another part of me that just wanted to see my friends again. To reconnect after running out on them the way I did. Perhaps that's why I didn't pay those alarm bells as much attention as I should. In fact, I remember the anticipation as we landed on the coast. Carrying Amy as I flew, I pointed out places where Sonic and I met Knuckles the first time we were there, or fought against one of Robotnik's flyers. I even remember joking about how campy those early designs of his used to be. It was nice, honestly. Even the weather was beautiful.

Well, it didn't take long to reach the Hidden Palace. I heard the guys talking together - well, arguing - before I saw them, but that went quiet as soon as I stepped inside.

Awkward.

But Sonic smiled when he saw me. Just for a moment before it was replaced by a more complex expression. I hesitated there at the door, mouth open as I searched for the right words to say. Really I wish I hadn't. Sonic took a step towards me, hands outstretched as he started to speak, but…

"Chaos control."

That's when things went bad.

It's always disconcerting being on the receiving end of Chaos Control (heck, might be just as bad when your the one using it, I dunno). One moment the world is a certain way, the next things have changed, but with no in between. Digital causality, rather than analogue. Well, I dunno if that makes sense to you, nobody usually gets my explanations at the best of times, and I… Well, it's not my best time right now.

Okay, to use an example, one moment everything's fine, you're surrounded by your friends, about to go in for a bro hug, maybe a fist bump with your best bud, not quite sure which yet, keeping your options open. Then a bald fat man uses chaos control, and suddenly, without anything happening in between, your friends are now grabbed by badniks, and you're hanging upside down with some robot hedgehog grabbing your butt. Weird, right? It's terrible, but at the same time your brain can't even process it for a bit. Well, that was how it was for me.

Anyway, maybe it was because of the blood rushing to my head, but as the blue crystal floor and walls started to fade, replaced by harsh metal and badly designed circuitry, I finally started to understand what Eggman had been up to. To paraphrase some human?

"Eggman's greatest achievement was in convincing the world he did not exist."

Figured that out just in time.

Heh.

And while he sat down on a throne built out of the Master Emerald and its altar, the robot hedgehog, with fourteen emeralds built into its body, carried me over for a good old fashioned monologue so the fat man could explain the rest.

It all started, obviously enough, when he attacked the floating island. With the prototype ruby, it needs a lot of power to manifest its quasi realities, power which normally requires a massive external power source, like the Death Egg. Bit of an obvious target, so the fat man found himself something else - wispon tech. While he tried to gather large amounts of wisps in the past to use them directly to try and conquer the world, that was noticeable enough to be easily stopped, but one or two wisps? They won't last long before running out of energy, but long enough to zone out one pesky guardian. Dump the dead wisp cell, install a new one, and just before Knuckles gets out of the phantom space, use it again to create a new quasi reality where the emerald is "missing", while actually just removing it from its altar and waddling to the other side of the room with it so the island crashed.

That's where the badniks came in. Once Knuckles got out of the first illusion and saw the emerald was missing, he ran out to look for it, and the badniks attacked him, leading him all around the island. That gave Eggman all the time he needed to turn the Master Emerald into a power source for the ruby, making the entire Hidden Palace into a giant illusion space under Eggman's control. So by the time Sonic and I showed up? Yeah, Knuckles was right, the emerald was right there, on the altar. Sonic was standing on it.

And when we left to search the planet for Eggman, we gave him an entire island full of ancient echidna tech, the Master Emerald, and all the time he needed to prepare.

Well, it's Eggman, so obviously he'd already expended most of his original thought at this point, so his next step was to create the Ultrasonic Mk IV... Yeah, like it sounds, he just made a robot copy of Sonic. Again. No previous versions of it either that I know of, pretty sure he just liked the look of "Mk IV". This time he at least thought to make it three laws compliant though - well, the "Do not cause harm to Robotnik, or through inaction allow Robotnik to come to harm, always obey any command given by Robotnik" version of the three laws at least. Totally loyal, totally obedient, and avoids the whole "rebel and try to kill everyone" flaw of the earlier versions.

By the time Ultra was finished, Eggman had done enough research on the Master Emerald that he was ready for stage two: depowering, then recovering, the chaos emeralds. Easy when you can locate them using the Master Emerald, and easy to hold onto them too while they're inert in the emerald chamber. He even purified them, which meant that when he sent Ultrasonic to raid that facility he did so with a brief, but full power, second stage chaos state, shining like silver… Well, for a phase one chaos state it would probably be shining gold, so maybe it would be better to call it platinum? Yeah, Silver never showed up at all, it was all just Eggman, with Ultra hacking the facility to get me and Sonic out of the picture as a secondary objective after he stole what he was looking for, which was…

…

Well, I mentioned before that technology doesn't disappear, right? Turns out that what G.U.N was working on was some rudimentary dimensional travel tech. Nothing near so advanced as what I made, but clearly someone over at G.U.N had been copying my notes, and with the dimension warping interactions between the prototype ruby and the master emerald subbing for the Sol emeralds it was more than enough for Eggman to perfect it with the stolen parts while I was off on Cocoa working on my old ring boomerang project.

And… Once he had that, he hit the Sol dimension.

I dunno what happened to everyone there. Eggman didn't say, but I know several people in the Sol dimension who would do everything they could to try and stop him, but according to Eggman, that was the shortest step.

But why would Eggman take the Sol emeralds? Not like he needed them for dimensional travel after all. Well, it's because the two types attract. By putting both together, Eggman no longer needed to shut down the emeralds to keep them stable. The unreliability issue of the emeralds was solved, and his power was now permanent. It was during his tests in this phase that Shadow probably felt the emeralds react, prompting the three of them to check Angel Island again, and setting them up for this trap.

And that's... how Eggman won. Maybe if I was there the whole time, if I'd used my head… Maybe we'd have managed to stop him, perhaps some kind of wisp engine to disrupt the Master Emerald before his plans were completed. But now he had the Sol/Chaos array complete, the Ruby Prototype in his meaty fist, the Master Emerald, a dimension hopping sky fortress, a godmode robot… and six would-be heroes at his mercy.


	5. Chapter 5

Wait. Did I say six?

I meant _five_. _Five_ heroes.

And me.

Yeah, maybe that sounds weird considering I started this by telling you how I was going to save the world, but while I've been a lot of things over the years. Scientist, racer, sidekick, hermit, hostage… Never been a hero.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad person now. I work very, very hard to not be a bad person. I try to save people who are in trouble, I've always tried to _help_ heroes, but…

Heroes don't need to _work_ at being good. They _are_ good. Even Shadow, when you take a chisel to that hard outer shell of moodiness and edge, inside is an inherently brave, decent person who wants to do the right thing, while Sonic _oozes_ so much heroism I wonder if that's what made him turn blue. He can't _help_ but do the good thing. It may not be the _right_ thing, but you could _never_ look at Sonic and say he's a coward, or a bad guy. At worst… naive? Easily tricked?

But even that comes back to heroism. Sonic believes the best of people because he can't help but think everyone is as good as he is, while I believe the best of people because I have to believe they can become better than they were.

… Ugh another nosebleed? Pause.

…

…

Okay, where was I?

Right, right, I was hanging from my tails next to Eggman while he gloated. I'd say I didn't know why I was given the front row seat, but I do. Of all the people against Eggman, I have the most in common with him. He wanted to beat Sonic because Sonic was in his way. He wanted to beat me to prove that he was _smarter_. And when he finally managed to pull it off, he wanted to rub it in my face up close and personal. Because, y'know, outsmarting a twelve year old is such a huge achievement.

Well, that's actually one thing Eggman has in common with Sonic actually, though it's more by accident. He _doesn't_ set out to kill people, not from some deep seated respect for life like Sonic, but because he wants to _win_ , and then watch the people he beat suffer for the rest of their lives _knowing_ he's won. It's an ego thing. Even Sonic, his longest time opponent (though not by much, I got in there pretty soon after his big villain debut myself), would probably live, just as a mindwiped cyborg or something. Me, he'd probably turn me into some fuzzy super villain pet. You know the one, they swivel around on a chair, and they'd be stroking some fuzzy critter and be all "no, I expect you to die"? Yeah, he'd love that. Miles Prower, _second_ smartest brain on the planet, nothing more than faithful furbaby to someone as great as him. And with Ultra at his side? He had more than enough strength to take us down right then without killing us, just like he wanted.

But I'm _not_ like that. And bringing me this close to him was Eggman's first and only mistake so far.

See, maybe it's because I spend more time working on gadgets than working out. Maybe it's because I'm young (and still waiting on that growth spurt. Seriously, I don't remember really growing even since I was a little kid, just slimmed up a little after running around with Sonic so much). Or maybe it's because I spend a lot of time hanging out with the people I do? Sonic, the fastest thing alive. Knuckles, who's so strong that he can punch almost anything to bits. Silver and Shadow, chaos welders supreme. Even Eggman, the smartest guy on the planet.

… Sorry, and Amy, best stalker in the universe. And Rouge is… wait, I'm getting sidetracked. Yeah, so maybe it's any of those reasons, but people tend to seriously underestimate me. I'm fast enough to break the sound barrier, I'm proportionally stronger than an ant by bodyweight, and I can punch a giant mech apart with my bare hands - walls too, if they're thin enough. I might only be second best, but I'm second best at a lot of things. And there's one thing I do better than anyone I know.

...Heh, you're probably thinking it's "fly" right?

Well, I guess there's the flying too, actually. At least as far as most mobians are concerned. But Ultra's strength was completely overwhelming, he was holding this helicopter fox's rotor, and there was nothing I could do about that.

So what's the other thing?

Well, I'd tell you to ask a kukku about that. But even in my dimension you'll have a lot of trouble finding one after they started a fight on my island.

Heh, I think Eggman would probably have kept a bit more distance from me if he knew about that.

Well, everyone would.

Me too, if I could.

… Yeah. Like I said, I try very hard to be a good person, and I've spent most of my life in the shadows of better people so I wouldn't need to make that sort of choice ever again. But... What's that saying? You only know what you are in the dark?

Well things were pretty dark right then. I was dangling next to the fat man on his throne, a mechanical god of destruction with a death grip on my butt and, from the looks of it, Sonic and Knuckles going to do something stupid any minute now. Maybe they hadn't figured out that they couldn't win, maybe heroes don't care about that sort of thing. But once I _had_ figured it all out, I made the choice to try and solve the world's Robotnik problem once and for all.

... Uh, problem for my world, that is. Yours is still doomed right now. Sorry.

So, while Robotnik was in the middle of elaborating on his weirdly detailed plan to turn the planet into a giant Eggman face in his glory, I... _flew_. Know what happens to a helicopter when its rotor gets stuck? Yeah, physics is fun like that. My body spun around at top speed, grabbed the ruby out of Eggman's hand, and then used all that momentum to throw it right into the Master Emerald as hard as I could.

The Master Emerald shattered, the prototype ruby too, and then proximate reality went through an uncontrolled high energy phase dimensional cascade failure.

… Uh… it went Boom! Thwip! And then something happened sort of like a black hole and a supernova had a baby. Thanks to its three law programming, Ultra moved in to save Eggman, and was fast enough to outrun the initial blast and shield Eggman from the worst of it - me, on the other hand, I blocked most of the blast with my face and neck, lost all my stored rings and most of the fur on my face, but at least he dropped me... Just in time to get sucked into the black nova. Yaay.

Everything outside the singularity's event horizon started to slow down then. I saw, but didn't hear, Sonic shouting, arm reached out towards me. Knuckles smashed his hand through the floor and grabbed Amy and Rouge in the other hand before crawl/climbing along the floor towards I assume the exit. I assume he knew the way? By now everything was almost stopped, but I think that I saw Shadow running towards Sonic, who was still reaching for me as though he might still pull me out as I accelerated towards infinity.

Well, I hope Shadow reached him in time, because I'm ninety-six percent sure that it was going to explode in a big way after the singularity finished collapsing. But… Yeah, I never saw it happen. As you've probably figured out by now, I went straight through the nova and ended up here, and so did Eggman and Ultrasonic.

So… uh, I accidentally sent a megalomaniac and his hyper powerful death robot to your dimension while I was trying to murder/suicide him, and, while I really, _really_ hope that it's you listening to this, Sonic, I'm almost certain that it isn't, because I took out both the people smart enough to build a machine capable of interdimensional travel, or even figuring out what dimension we ended up in, three of the power sources you might use to power such a machine, and probably killed the only people on the planet who knew what happened in the first place, you included.

All I hope now is that you and Amy and Knuckles and everybody are safe, and happy, and living peacefully in a world without Eggman, and with-... without me, too. And, I'm really sorry to whoever's listening to this, but if I fail, I hope that Eggman never finds his way back to the Chaos dimension.

Because I probably never will.


	6. Chapter 6

Alright. At this point you know what happened, why Eggman is here, and why the world needs saving. Last I'll explain what I've been doing here, then… well, then it'll probably be your problem and I won't be around to care.

When we got here, it was around three thousand feet up, in a huge fireball of chaos energy and falling shards of the Master Emerald that was probably awesome to watch. Less awesome to be in. Eggman was limp, passed out. Ultra, obviously, was totally fine, but it ignored me completely; saving Eggman was its highest priority, after all. It grabbed him and zipped out of sight in a blink.

I have to say, part of me was _delighted_ when I saw that he survived.

Yeah, he's probably carved his face onto your planet at this point, but I really was.

See, I'll be the first to admit… to this anonymous recording in a dimension where nobody knows who I am, that killing is _always_ an option in my brain, deep down in the feral, predatory, depths. That's why I always carried real weapons rather than rigging up some anti-bot E.M.P tools that would have worked way better against all of Eggman's machines. "Just in case."

Yeah. Cute Tails, sweet Tails. Poor Tails got bullied for being a genetic freak and it made him _sad_? I sank the kukku's entire floating island off the coast of Cocoa. Bodies were washing up on the beach for _weeks_. I racked up a bigger kill count by age six than Robotnik managed over six years of full time supervillainy, and when the reality of what I did finally hit me, I was a _mess_. _That's_ the real Miles right there. Sonic saved me in so many ways I can't even count, but all the way up to the end I was still more afraid of myself than I was of Robotnik. So yeah, I was pathetically grateful that, at least in my dimension, "Tails" never became a killer.

Sorry if you were expecting someone better to save you.

... Pause.

…

Right! So there I was, three thousand feet up, and I don't know if it was the initial spin or the sudden stop at the end, but I realised at this point that my tails were very, very broken from my stunt earlier. Caught on fire for a second at the beginning too, but I hit a cloud, then I hit the ground. One of those two put it out.

Hm. I think I talked earlier about terminal velocity. Well, to elaborate a little, your average human reaches a terminal velocity of one hundred and twenty miles per hour.

Uh, just so we're clear, that's velocity, not my name. Thanks again, genetic donors.

Anyway, Sonic reaches terminal velocity of around ninety miles an hour, me a bit less, because I'm a little smaller than Sonic and a whole lot fluffier.

Finally, there's mass. I'm about thirty-six pounds dry now, probably closer to fifty at the time. Meanwhile a human weighs three times that on average. This all adds up to the fact that a human hits the ground about four times harder than I do, and that I can run, without my tails, a lot faster than I fall. I could fall from low orbit and my biggest concern would be getting struck by lightning on the way down. Which is a real thing that can happen, I don't care what anyone says.

Of course, this is forgetting that I had so many broken bones in my tails I basically rattled. Long, horrible story short, I spent the first few weeks after my arrival regretting my life choices and scraping together a place to recover. Forget any grand schemes at that point, I was barely surviving and had no idea what had happened to Eggman, why there were no rings to collect, or where I was.

Well, I'm sure me going native isn't very interesting, so skipping ahead, it was while I was checking some traps for food some time in the first month that I found my first piece of the Master Emerald (gem hunter I am not, I walked past that thing six or seven times before I noticed it). Few weeks later I saw Ultrasonic again - leaving, fortunately. The smoke from his "activities" actually led me to the remains of the first settlement I found here, and its lone survivor was the first human I saw in this dimension. From what she told me, Ultra had come trying to recover the lost pieces of the Master Emerald, and when the people there hadn't complied fast enough, it wiped out everything to find them.

According to the name tag on her shirt the human's name was Bonnie. If you knew her, I promise I did everything I could to save her. And once I buried her, I decided for a second time that Eggman had to die, and that I was the one who was going to do it. No matter the cost.

Well, deciding and doing are two very different things. I lost all my rings when I arrived, and as you well know, there aren't any on this planet, so my starting assets equalled one fox with no rings, a tail-splint, and some broken glowy rocks. Even though Ultrasonic can't replenish rings either, making its chaos transformation limited, even in its basic form with the amount of power it's drawing from the emeralds I literally can't even scratch it, while Eggman himself has almost all the Master Emerald pieces and has, from what I've seen in the last few months has been installing the shards into new robots to act as enforcers over the new territory he's taken over. He also may or may not have finished a new phantom ruby prototype, though I don't think there's anything on this dimension that can serve as a sufficiently strong power source.

So I began phase one: Run away.

Yeah, my speciality. Once the last piece of the Master Emerald is completed, Eggman will probably gather all his enforcer bots back to reassemble it to power the new ruby, find somewhere with rings, and start conquering everything he can reach with the bootleg dimensional tech he used, so keeping this shard safe will keep him, and more importantly Ultrasonic, busy looking for it.

So I sealed the shards of the Master Emerald I had in lead I scavenged from the destroyed town, grabbed all the components and tools I could find (and carry), and left, staying clear of anyone - Eggman might torture information out of people for my whereabouts - until I found a nice cosy cave system to hide in.

And once I reached this place, I started doing the same thing you'll probably be doing yourself before long.

Phase two: Making fake emeralds.

By the most optimistic estimate, one of my fake chaos emeralds possesses just under one percent the output of a real one. So for you, using the schematics I've attached, you should need to manufacture around seven to eight hundred to replicate sufficient power for a super transformation, or if you're a human or can't handle chaos energy, a suitably powerful warhead and delivery system in file B. Assuming I manage to achieve at least part of my goal this should be enough to take out Eggman and whatever fortress he might have constructed by the time you're listening to this.

Myself? Well, like I said before, I'm no Sonic when it comes to handling chaos energy. While I eventually managed to achieve a chaos transformation with just the seven regular chaos emeralds, the moment I showed up Ultrasonic would just trigger its second state transformation and then I wouldn't be able to scratch it. So I've built… seven thousand eight hundred and seventy eight fake emeralds. So far.

Yeah, again, my speciality, I'm going all in on the "fake it til you make it" strategy. It's getting pretty cramped down here.


	7. Chapter 7

Well, I could explain the exact mechanics behind what I'm about to attempt, but it would probably make sense to talk about speed.

Okay, Sonic "jogs" at just below mach one. Yeah, he can go faster, but like anyone, sprinting at top speed more than ten to twenty seconds or so is going to take its toll on him pretty quick, especially once the sound barrier kicks in and air resistance ramps up, which is a big reason why I've never pushed much past Mach 1 under normal conditions.

Well, chaos states are the same way. Someone like Sonic or Shadow is way more "aerodynamic" than me, so they take less energy to reach them. I think it may have something to do with emotional state. Sonic is way more passionate than I am about… everything, and it's usually him getting worked up that pushes him to break the barrier or pull off some chaos shenanigans with an emerald.

Practice helps - I managed to reach the stage one form after years of exposure and hands on experience, while Sonic is good enough at drawing their energy he can actually channel enough to transform multiple people using the same trick I did with the flickies. But there's still a limit, obviously. Sonic has never managed a stage two transformation with just the energy from the unpurified emeralds, they don't generate energy quickly enough to push through that second barrier.

So, by my calculations, in order for a second rate chaos wielder like me to push through to match Ultra I'd need about eight thousand fakes. I've been at it for… a long time. Artificial rings, too, though each one takes a lot to make. I've been at it since I started recording and I still only have seventy-five. And no way to actually test whether or not they'd work to power a chaos state.

… Oh, I lied by the way, when I said I'd be saving the world today. I've been working on this recording whenever I've been able to over the last few weeks. You never knew because of the worllld of editiiiing.

...

… You can't see it, but I was totally wiggling my fingers just then.

Anyway, assuming there isn't a fox shaped smudge on the wall of my lab and I actually manage to get this to work, then Ultrasonic will be my first target, and even if I… don't win, that should take away enough rings that it won't be able to transform anymore. So I don't recommend you do this if you don't have to. There are some pretty severe side effects with having this much chaos energy in one place over a long period of time. I'm pretty sure my body is being forced into a low grade chaos state, and it's getting more frequent as the number of emeralds approaches the full eight thousand - the equivalent of about eight purified emeralds. Without ring energy, the transformation is directly consuming matter from across my body. My short term memory is shot, and there are nosebleeds, headaches… and I've lost a lot of weight - most of it from my bones. Oh, and my short term memory is shot too.

Since my short term memory is shot, I've taken to carrying around a pad of paper with basic stuff written on it, stuff like what I'm doing, where I left things. I've automated most of the process now, but with my memory getting worse as time goes on, I'm writing more and more down all the time. Hopefully it will stop me from sticking my head into any moving parts as my memory goes… Well, hopefully I won't lose anything more important than that before I finish. I like veggies, rather not be one.

… Actually that reminds me. I said that I didn't know my parents, right? One of my earliest memories is actually reading a letter from them. Well, a note actually. All it said was "Your name is Miles Prower."

That's it. No "you are heir to the secret fox Kingdom, cast out for your butt accessories", no "sorry we have to leave you to go fight space wizards, try not to genocide anyone while we're out", just "You're a walking pun, enjoy!". Funny, right?

… Yeah. Funny. Heh.

…

Well the last emerald just rolled off the production line (sorry, wasn't that quick, I haven't recorded in days), my grand total of dummy rings has reached ninety-nine, and I've started the arduous process of absorbing eight thousand emeralds. Don't ask how that works, probably the same way Amy's hammer does. I told you about that… Right? Well if you're a mobian you'll see it in action soon enough.

Anyway, I'll be finishing up some safeguards on the blueprint files and setting up stuff here ready to leave, so these should be my final few messages. Best case, I'll take down Eggman and Ultra, but I hope that I at least manage to take out Ultrasonic for you. If not, I've calculated that separating the two sets of emeralds (you might want to destroy the godrobot first) and activating the dimensional resonator (uh... it's in attachment D, I think?) should cause a reaction where they both slingshot back to their respective dimensions. This should stop Eggman from just rebuilding it when you win.

I also calculated that this would cause a very, very big boom, so, uh, try not to stand with your face next to it. Trust me on this.

…

Two thousand done. I am so bored. And hungry. What I wouldn't give for some mints. Anything I didn't have to hunt myself would be nice.

…

F-f-five th-th-thousa-sa-sa-sand. I c-can f-f-feeel m-my t-t-t-teeth hummmming.

...

Well, that's it. I'm… done. Don't worry if you can't find any pieces of the Master Emerald. I… Did… something? It… Ma-made sense. At the time? More… Co-control. Should have written a note… forgot.

Body is… hurts. Too much. But… I can… Hold it a bit longer. No choice. No flickies. I mi-miss flickies. I…

I miss… you.

You were special... Unique. And I liked that be-because I was too. It meant we could be alone, together? But… You kept meeting more and more pe-people… good people. Just like you. And for the longest time I hated that, hated them. Because every time, it felt like you kept ge-getting less special. But I never did. I was just… me.

It was lonely sometimes, but… It was fu-fun too. In the end I made so many friends. I... wish I could have said goodbye to all of you. And tha... thanks.

… Gotta juice. I'll try and make you proud.

**The End**


	8. Epilogue

It was a beautiful day on Cocoa Island.

The sun was shining brightly in the sky, reflecting off spinning rings. Brightly coloured flickies flew between them, singing to one another the news of the day as they danced among the sparkling gold.

The light dimmed and the forest fell silent as dark clouds billowed into existence in the sky overhead. Otherworldly lightning bolts flashed across the sky again and again, thunder rumbling across the island for long minutes before, as quickly as they had come, the clouds collapsed in on themselves and vanished once more. A tiny yellow speck tumbled down from where they had once been.

A dozen pairs of eyes stared inquisitively from the trees as the speck doubled in size, then doubled again, before finally slamming into the earth in a spray of sticks and fallen leaves. A small furry figure staggered to his feet, shimmering golden fur fading to orange as green arcs of chaos energy discharged into the air around him, crackling between twin tails that stretched out behind him as he straightened.

"Wh… What was…?" The young fox clutched the back of his neck as he peered blankly around a clearing that looked both familiar and unfamiliar. An old abandoned shack peeking out from between the trees in the distance.

A pink flicky flew down, twittering in curiosity, and the fox answered with an absent minded trill of his own as he started to walk slowly towards the shack, pulling a tattered scrap of paper from a bloodstained glove out of forgotten habit.

"I was…" The fox trailed off as he gazed down at the paper, most of its contents burned away until what was left was barely more than a note.

"Your name is… Miles Prower." The fox mumbled to himself, running a finger across the haphazard text. "And... you are going to save the world."

Miles blinked a few times, dashing his eyes with the back of his hand before folding the paper up and sliding it carefully back into his glove. Raising his head to the trees, the fox broke into a toothy grin.

"Yeah! When I grow up? I'm going to save the world! Just you wait, guys!"

Jumping into the air, Miles' tails whirred into a blur and he took off, racing home to work on his inventions.

And the sun went on shining, and the flickies kept on singing, until soon the whole island had heard of the arrival of a strange and special little fox that the world had never seen before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading Eternal Tails: Chaos Break, a surprisingly canonical look at Tails the Fox.
> 
> It's strange to think that one of the brightest, most pleasant characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe is actually the series' morally grey child soldier, but by heck does it make Tails' behaviour throughout the series make a lot of sense.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading, if you didn't, please give me both barrels in a comment about anything that you think could have been done better. If you did, please consider leaving a comment anyway, even if it's something simple or something you'd like to see more of in future, I always enjoy seeing words from folks.
> 
> In future I'll be putting up plenty more Eternal Tails stories, so if you like your sidekicks angsty and hypercompetent then stay tuned for the next story, Eternal Tails: Happy Days.
> 
> ~ Pan


End file.
